The Walking Dead En Route to AMC – Here’s How

There’s probably no better person to tackle the adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead than Frank Darabont. I’ve always been a fan of the guy, and two years after the release of his masterpiece, The Mist, I’m adamant that we’ve yet to get another genre film that good. By crafting a perfect balance of creature feature, human drama, and social commentary, Darabont proved himself a master of the elements required to make this sucker work. And today we’re learning a little bit about how he intends to do it.

MTV talked to author Robert Kirkman about the upcoming project, which sounds almost too good to be true:

“I’m going to be an executive producer on the show, so I’ll have my hands all over the thing. But it’s important to me that I’m only involved in the show as much my comic book career will allow. I’m excited that there is a television show, and I’m excited that Darabont is involved—and one of the big reasons for that is that I trust him. I don’t need to look over his shoulder.

Frank understands the material 100 percent. It’s always been shocking to me, doing Hollywood meetings over the years, just how easy it is for someone to come in to the meeting and say something like, ‘We want the zombies to have super powers.’ Knowing that, I’m really excited about it, because from my discussions with Frank, he likes the right things about ‘Walking Dead.’

And for those who are worried about it becoming somewhat “sanitized” due to being on TV, Kirkman reassures us, “One of the concerns I have about zombie fiction is when they rely too much on the shocking gore aspects. That’s not really the point of ‘Walking Dead,’ so to a certain extant, I think it will work better at AMC—because it forces people not to rely on that stuff … In fact, I just had a meeting with a bunch of the executives at AMC, and Darabont, and Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert at Circle of Confusion, and the executives were talking to Darabont about his script and they said, ‘You can’t use the F-word.’ That was the only limitation they gave him. We were all stunned.”

You can check the whole interview out over at MTV, and rest assured we’ll keep you in the loop as soon as we have more.